I have read up a bit on the internet but I have been busy and don't think I quite understand whatever was written.

I need advice. I have been editing "locally" for many years but now I am going into editing videos where the raw material is stored in a far off international location, ie the client's hard drive. What do I and the client have to do to get me the raw footage, which may be several files? How would a client send me a 10gb video file, for example? And what is the best way for me to send the final product over the internet? The project will be ongoing so an efficient work system is needed.

The bad news is that I currently don't have uncapped internet so I have to carefully consider my upload\download operation for the foreseeable future.

For the love of God, don't try to sync files with your clients over Dropbox if you have limited data. Video files are so big. SO. BIG. If you have a 300 gig data cap, that could be eaten up in one project. Plus, it will take eight days for the client to upload, and four days for you to download. This is a huge waste of time.

So here's what you're going to do. Get your client to send you all the relevant media on a drive--make sure it's not the only drive where they have this data, it needs to be a copy. Then, use Dropbox or Vimeo to let them review your cuts. If they HAVE to have access to the project file (which I don't recommend) you can share that via Dropbox, with the file pointers going to your external media drive. The client can then reconnect the media to their local copy.

Cloud services and internet speeds are just not there yet when it comes to sharing video. They just aren't.

Cloud is not designed for high-bandwidth realtime video work for the common man who is running his own business. It's possible to have high bandwidth file delivery but you gotta pay a lot for it from companies like Signiant or Aspera. Their services are used mainly by broadcasters. You might want to check them out if cost is not a concern.

However, I will suggest the following :

1. Get your client to convert those high-res files to low-res proxies and have him upload to cloud (Google. Dropox, etc). Have him ship you a copy of all the original high-res media on a portable HDD.

2. Download those proxies to your NLE and edit from there while waiting for the portable HDD so no time is wasted.

3. When the external drive arrive, copy those high-res media to your NLE (hopefully on a dedicated raid media drive) and relink them for grading, effects and output.

5. Render the final output. Zip that rendered file with encryption and upload to the cloud if it is not too big. Or copy the encrypted zipped file onto a flash-drive and ship it to your client.